When they left her room, the house was alive with people moving quickly to their designated entry point to the bunker. Their faces revealed the tension they felt, but no one was panicked. This evacuation had been practiced dozens of times over the last few days, in the day and in the night.
She and Bastion went past several women who were sharing goodbyes with their men. The guilt Selena felt putting them in this situation was tremendous.
Bastion took her hand and squeezed. You are not the maniac driving this. Flynn is. Keep your perspective right.
In the den, she kissed him. “Be safe.”
He stared into her eyes, then smiled. “Always. I’ll let you know when the threat is done.”
Selena followed a group down the stairs to the bunker. Things were chaotic there. It was a large space, but a lot of people were moving around. Kit, Rocco, and Owen were hugging their families. Wynn was getting the younger pride boys settled in the bunkroom. There weren’t enough beds for all the kids, so the older ones had pallets set up in the conference room.
A quick check showed everyone was accounted for. The bunker was secured. The house was secured. All that remained was the waiting—the part Selena hated the most.
Although there were many points of entry into the big mansion, Bastion’s team took up posts outside so they could keep the ghouls from getting in. Guerre had the back of the house, Acier had the front, and Bastion held the entrance to the bunker tunnel. Selena listened to their check-ins via the team’s comm unit. Her team was spread throughout the house. If the ghouls got inside, they’d have to go through the guys before getting to the civilians in the bunker.
Wynn came out of the bunkroom where some of the kids were riding out the storm. She was doing a second head count. When she finished, she looked at Selena with a frown. “Mouse is gone. He was here. I counted him before.”
Selena nodded. “Let’s check with Greer.” They went into the ops room where Greer was manning the security cameras. “Hey—did you see Mouse go back upstairs?”
“No. Let me take a look.” He flipped through the cams that watched the elevator and the den entrance. Mouse wasn’t on any of them in the last half-hour. He went back to the screens he’d been watching and sat up straight. “Oh, shit. They’re here.”
Selena moved to have a better look at the screens. Bastion and his friends were each engaged in fights with multiple monsters. The ghouls’ eyes were glowing orange, and they moved like a pack of wolves, each backing up the others.
Wynn gasped. Her face went white. She covered her mouth with her hand, but couldn’t tear her eyes from the cameras.
Selena grabbed her arm and led her back to the conference room where the other women were, before returning to the ops room.
“Greer,” Val said via their comm units, “there’s a kid up here. In the gym wing.”
“That’s Mouse. I’m on it,” Selena said.
“No.” Greer stood up. “I got it. You stay here.”
“Greer, you’re our eyes on what’s happening. I can’t work the monitors like you can. I got this. I’ll grab him and get back down here.”
Greer glared at her. “Be quick about it.”
Selena gave a last look at the screen that showed Bastion fighting the ghouls. She didn’t tell him she was popping out of the bunker—she didn’t want to distract him.
The first thing she heard when she exited the elevator was the sound of fighting—inside the house. She could hear furniture being smashed. Glass was shattering.
“You’re clear,” Greer said.
Selena hurried around the corner. At the doors leading to the gym wing, she saw Mouse pounding on the glass door, a look of terror on his young face. Greer unlocked the door. Selena pushed it open, but Mouse ran deeper into the building, disappearing into the workout room.
She didn’t call out for him—didn’t want to alert any ghouls who might be nearby that a kid was running loose. Instead, she jogged after him.
In the workout room, she whispered, “Mouse! Where are you? We have to get out of here.” She heard a faint sniffling in the far corner and found him tucked into a tight ball, crying. The riata he always wore was nowhere in sight. She crouched and touched his back. “Hey. It’s okay. I’ve got you. Why did you leave the bunker?”
He didn’t answer her question. “I’m scared, Sel. There are monsters out there. Real ones. Not the pretend wendigos like we’ve been playing.”
“I know.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him to his feet. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll be safe in the bunker.” They walked to the door. “Greer, I’ve got him. We’re heading back.”
“You’re clear. Move it, Sel.”
She looked at Mouse. “We have to hurry back to the elevator. Keep up with me, okay?”
Mouse nodded.
Selena opened the door from the workout room. The gym hallway was clear. Outside, she could see Guerre fighting the monsters. Several were lying prone around the lawn. She tore her gaze away and started down the hallway with Mouse.
The door to the pool room opened. Selena let go of Mouse to palm her knife. A man stepped into the hallway, blond, tall, muscular. She knew his square face from all the times Bastion and his team had shown him to her.
Brett Flynn.
Selena pushed Mouse behind her, but he scrambled free and ran to stand next to Flynn, smirking as he turned to face her.
“Mice make the best pets, don’t you agree?” Flynn smiled at her as he tousled Mouse’s hair.
Oh. God. This wasn’t good. “Let him go.”
“I don’t think so.” Flynn swept a forefinger along his own cheek, then gestured toward Selena. “This little monster tagged you with his riata. Only I am allowed to scar you. He took what was mine.”
“He’s a kid. He’s not in this fight.”
Flynn smiled down at Mouse. “But he’s been so useful, driving my other pets onto the property. He was the only way in.”
“You want me to be impressed that you used a child?” she scoffed. “I’m not.” At least she now know how Flynn got the ghouls onto the grounds, but not how he himself got in. Bastion had said Flynn couldn’t get through the protections. That meant…Flynn wasn’t really there. He was in his astral body.
Selena started forward. “Mouse, let’s go.”
Mouse was slammed against the wall, his arms and legs spread wide. He was a few inches off the ground.
“You think I’m not here, but if I weren’t, could I do this?”
Mouse slowly slid up the wall. He was whimpering. “Sel, help me! Sel!” When his head hit the ceiling, his body bent and continued to move until he was standing over Flynn.
Selena watched as Flynn drew a knife from its sheath and held it up. “Come with me, and I’ll spare the boy.”
“Spare the boy, and I’ll come with you.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Do it, Flynn.”
“Oh, very well.” The force field holding Mouse must have vanished, for the boy dropped straight down, onto Flynn’s knife.
Selena screamed and rushed forward to help him. But not only was he not breathing, he wasn’t there. Both he and Flynn had disappeared.
Selena turned in a circle as she tried to grasp what had just happened. Bastion and the guys had spent most of the last two weeks introducing her and the team to the extreme mind fucks mutants were capable of. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. She was still in the gym hallway, alone.
She walked out of the gym wing and back into the main hallway. All was silent now. She couldn’t hear any sounds of fighting.
“Selena, what the fuck are you doing up there?” Greer asked, as if he hadn’t been part of her decision to go after Mouse.
“Yeah, not digging the joke, Greer. Mouse was missing in Wynn’s second head count.”
“Um. No, he wasn’t. He’s here. Everyone except you is present and accounted for. Get your ass back down here.”
“Flynn’s here. In the house. As an
astral projection.”
“Hell. I’ll alert the others. Get back here.”
Selena ignored that. Something odd was happening. “Where did everyone go? No one’s up here. It’s all quiet. They were fighting a minute ago.”
“Selena, come back here.”
“No. Something’s not right. I’m going to check it out.”
“Dammit, Sel! I can’t leave. Get your ass back here,” Greer shouted into their comms.
Selena quit talking to him. Flynn was here; the others had disappeared—or had been taken down by the ghouls. Where was Bastion? Was he hurt?
She went down the hall, looking in each room, seeing neither her teammates nor their bodies. She wasn’t so worried about Flynn now that she knew he was just a projection of himself. He couldn’t hurt her…or so she hoped. Bastion had said he could still manipulate the physical world, but he couldn’t be as strong in astral form as he was in person.
When she got to the foyer, Bastion stumbled into the room, tangling with two ghouls. God, those things were horrendous.
“Selena.” Flynn’s voice startled her. She spun around, seeing him standing beside the open front door. “You have a choice now. A turning point. The decision you make will impact everyone you love.” He nodded toward Bastion. A ghoul was standing behind him, his clawed hand at Bastion’s throat.
Even a fast-healing mutant wouldn’t survive having his throat ripped out. The second ghoul was on all fours now, its distorted limbs making it move in a fiendish way as it sniffed at Bastion, rising on its hind legs to smell the blood pumping through his body.
“Selena, leave now. I got this. Go back with the others,” Bastion said.
She shook her head.
“No, you can’t. You know why?” Flynn asked. “Because you have a frail heart that feels far too much.” He extended his hand. “Come with me, and I will spare your beloved mutant.”
Tears filled Selena’s eyes. She mentally pleaded with Bastion to understand. To save him, she had to go with Flynn.
Bastion woke in Selena’s bed the next morning. Alone. He sent his senses out, expanding in a widening field through the room, the house, the gym, the grounds.
She was gone.
Guerre, Acier—Selena’s gone. She’s not on the compound.
Bastion dressed fast and was just opening his door as the guys reached his room. “I never felt her leave. I would have woken up.”
“Let’s wake Greer and Max up, have them check the cameras,” Guerre said.
Bastion texted the two ops guys to meet them in the bunker. It was early yet. Russ and Jim hadn’t even come over to start breakfast.
They went to the den, then thundered down the stairs to the bunker. The ops guys came in from weapons room looking bleary-eyed.
“What is it that couldn’t wait until morning?” Max growled.
“It is morning,” Bastion said. “Selena’s gone. I want to see the security footage.”
Greer sat at the bank of computer screens and played the footage from the previous night. They could see Selena leave her room. She went downstairs, but stood still, in a frozen state for several minutes. Then she walked to the foyer and left through the front door.
Guerre and Acier replayed the footage, but Bastion didn’t need to see it again.
Flynn had come for Bastion’s light. He’d taken her right from his arms.
39
Selena opened her eyes, shocked to find herself in the large bathroom of her prep school days. The white tiles were clean. The big mirror over the row of sinks was intact.
“Bet you never thought you’d come back here,” Flynn said, leaning against one of the stalls.
Bastion, can you hear me?
“I felt nostalgic and wanted to bring you back here, where we began.”
Selena faced Flynn, but didn’t speak—she had no desire to participate in whatever sick fantasy he’d cooked up.
Bastion, please.
I hear you. Where are you?
In the bathroom where…
The scene blinked and changed. She wasn’t standing there anymore talking with the devil. She was now on her back, lying on shards of glass. Flynn was on top of her.
She cried out to Bastion. He’s on me. It’s happening all over again.
It’s not real, Selena. It’s not happening. Flynn is incapable of sexual arousal. He’s playing you against your memories.
Why?
He likes your fear.
Selena stared at the man moving over her. He wasn’t the eighteen-year-boy, but the present-day man. He was enjoying her assault, now as he had then. Experiencing the event again, she realized she had no fear. Disgust, yes. Rage, yes. But he couldn’t steal from her now as he did then. She reached over and grabbed the big shard of glass, the one she’d used way back then to cut him and his friend up. He’d reproduced the illusion exactly as it had been, minus his friend.
Selena sliced the side of his face. He stopped moving, looking at her in shock. No blood poured through the crevices of the hand he held to his cheek because all of this was just an illusion…and somehow, she’d wrested control of it from him.
She smiled at him, then kicked him off her. He punched her stomach, then slammed his fist into her jaw. Her mind went black.
Bastion was in the den at the Red Team headquarters, surrounded by Selena’s team and his. Liege had stayed at the fort with the Ratcliffs and Summer, but he’d sent a helicopter to them. They were all anxiously waiting to pinpoint her location, but Bastion hadn’t been able to get a read on that yet. At least she was keeping herself open to him.
“He’s torturing her,” Bastion said.
“Can you see what she was seeing?” Owen asked.
Bastion nodded, then looked around the room. “Selena told you that Flynn and his friend assaulted her in the bathroom at school when she was fourteen. She said she fought them off. Well, that’s true, she did, but they spent a half-hour taking turns with her first.”
Owen looked crushed. “Christ.”
“Flynn has taken her back to that point in time,” Bastion said. “He’s making her see it over and over.”
“Are you sure he didn’t take her back to that actual place?” Ace asked, her hands fisted.
Acier shook his head. “He doesn’t need to physically be somewhere to project it to a regular.”
“Flynn’s modifications went haywire,” Bastion said. “He can’t get an erection, his facial scars never healed, and his sickness deepened. It’s why he was riding Hawk, cultivating him for his own deviant purposes. He can only experience desire through possessing another man’s experience.”
Ace waved that away. “Whether it’s happening now or not, she’s in that mind space. We have to get her out of there.”
Val put his arm around Ace and pulled her close. “They’re working on it. This isn’t our world. They have to do it their way.”
Liege had been in Selena’s mind before, and he could go there again at will, except now Flynn was intercepting their connection.
“He’s not blocking me,” Bastion said.
Guerre nodded. “He can’t. You’re bonded. Can you reach her? Liege could follow you in.”
I’m with you, Liege said. When you get into her mind, I will too.
“I can reach her, but she’s not responding,” Bastion said. Was she unconscious? What was happening?
Selena opened her eyes. Her body hurt. Her jaw hurt. That pain felt real—something surprisingly comforting, considering she was back in the nightmare again.
Bastion.
You’re awake.
Got her! Liege said.
Bastion—stay with me.
I will. I am. We’re coming for you. I need you to do something.
Anything.
Keep fighting Flynn.
He’ll kill me.
No. He wants to relive your assault first. Every time you don’t play along, he has to start it over. He wants it replayed right so he can end it differently. Keep at it
.
I love you. Were you hurt last night in the fight? she asked.
There was no fight, Selena. Your mind was manipulated.
But we talked to Guerre and Acier. Owen joined us. The ghouls were outside the house—I saw them on the security cameras. All the kids but one made it to the bunker.
Be calm, Selena. And stay focused. He’s been messing with your reality. I will tell you everything soon. Keep fighting him. None of this is real. Not last night, not now.
It hurts like it’s real.
Stay strong. We’re close.
When Selena opened her eyes next, she was standing in the middle of the bathroom, frantically searching for a way to block the door or hide herself, a full reboot of the nightmare. The door slammed open. Flynn was there, with that same flat stare and lecherous grin he’d had twelve years ago. The effect was ruined by his new face. He was still hiding his appearance from her, which helped remind her that she was who she was and he was who he was—neither of them were the kids they’d been back in the day.
Selena had lost track of how many times this memory had been started over since he’d taken her. Enough that it was losing its hold on her. Odd, she thought, that the more he sought to terrorize her, the more she healed.
The memory jumped forward to when she was lying on top of all the glass from the smashed mirror. He crawled between her legs.
She was bored.
Bored.
She actually laughed. He slapped her.
This repeated simulation held less and less power over her. Like a lucid dream, she realized that she could move at will around the memory, be in different locations, react differently. Each little change she imposed on his illusion made him more frantic.
She had survived him then, and now—over and over.
This time, she reached to the ground and picked up a narrow chunk of flesh. Bloody and soft, it was the skin she’d cut from his cheek that day so long ago.
Flynn’s face flickered like a malfunctioning TV, flipping back and forth between his old face and his new one. When he saw the skin she was holding up, he screamed and pressed it to his cheek.
Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion Page 36